Adam Johnson is an emblem of football's broken soul

Adam Johnson is a monster of football’s own making. The former Sunderland player’s own counsel, Orlando Pownall QC, described him at Bradford Crown Court as “immature, arrogant, promiscuous – the only time he had to fend for himself was on the field, cheered on by thousands of adoring fans”.

Throw in a weekly wage of £60,000 on Wearside, where average local pay in a year was less than a third of that, and there was a recipe for such adulation to be abused. His very deportment at the moment of arrest, sitting atop a minibar inside his gated mansion, spoke of the acute disjuncture between him and those by whom he was misguidedly adored.

Cynical, manipulative and poorly educated, Johnson betrayed the solipsism of his existence throughout his trial, even as he faced spending the rest of his career in prison for sexual activity with a child.

Oblivious to the irony, he used the judge’s absences from the courtroom to fiddle constantly with his mobile phone, the instrument of his demise. He was reprimanded for “discourteous behaviour”. Then, as the jury retired for their deliberations, he let a door swing in the face of a junior barrister.

Adam Johnson leaves Bradford Crown Court on Wednesday

Johnson was overheard telling a friend that he hoped it would all end by the third Friday, as “it was getting a bit boring”. He cited the same excuse, boredom, in drawing the context for why he had set about grooming a 15-year-old girl.

Alone in his hotel rooms before Sunderland matches, he would spend his time simultaneously texting the mother of his baby daughter and working out how to cheat on her with an impressionable minor. “You get caught up in texting just to keep yourself busy,” he said.

While philandering is hardly a novel concept for Johnson’s ilk, the stupidity and scurrility with which Johnson turned his own straying into a crime offers a sorry reflection on these narcissistic times. Spool back 100 years, to 1916, and footballers of Johnson’s age were dying by the score at the Battle of the Somme.

The only conduit to understanding the private life of William Jonas, the pin-up boy for Clapton Orient, was through the words he uttered to team-mate Richard McFadden when he went over the top at Delville Wood: “Goodbye, Mac, best of luck. Special love to my sweetheart, Mary Jane.” By such statements can one form a measure of the man.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that a man such as Johnson shall be remembered not by any nobility of sentiment but by a cache of 834 often sordid WhatsApp messages.

Thirty years ago, the typical ratio of a top-flight footballer’s wage to the mean was 2.5 to one. Today, it is closer to 100 to one, with the rate of cultural alienation between players and their fans equally exponential.

Adam Johnson leaves Bradford Crown Court

In Johnson’s case, it was not merely the six-bedroom pile in Castle Eden, County Durham, which reflected this degree of separation, or the fleet of luxury cars with personalised numberplates. It was the fact that his version of working day finished no later than lunchtime, after morning training, leaving an ocean of time that he had neither the wit nor wisdom to occupy constructively. Within that expanse of listless hours, temptations dwelt, not to mention an appetite for exploiting the worship that his accoutrements of wealth inspired.

Andy Ferrell, who rose from a council-estate upbringing to playing alongside Alan Shearer and Craig Bellamy for Newcastle, became acquainted with the seamy underbelly of this louche lifestyle.

Frustrated in the reserves, he was caught up in a cocaine-dealing ring to pay for his addiction to casinos and sentenced to four years. Pointedly, he blamed his downfall on the opportunities his time-rich regimen gave for over-indulgence. “You’ve got enough money to do what you want, and too much time on your hands,” Ferrell reflected. “I’m a lad who has to be busy all the time, but I had finished training in time to be in the bookie’s for the 1.30 at Cheltenham.”

Gambling, alcoholism and sex are the trinity of evils waiting to ensnare the unwary footballer kicking his heels. Johnson succumbed to the third, his commitment to his clandestine assignations faltering only when he Googled the age of consent.

He was convinced he was a protected species, beyond normal boundaries and codes of decency, whose deception would not be detected. He believed this with good reason, it turned out, with his club standing by him after his arrest and affording him liberties that require far greater explanation.

Instead, they lifted the suspension after two weeks when Johnson initially made clear his intention to fight all charges. In the 49 weeks and three days that it took him to confess, Johnson earned £2.96 million. It is galling enough that Sunderland retained his services at all, given that employees at almost any other company would have been suspended pending trial, given the gravity of the allegations.

Even as he awaited trial, he could profit, just as he always had, from football’s warped rulebook for its stars. It would be a precious step forward, as Johnson prepares for a long spell at Her Majesty’s pleasure, if the game would regard him less as a feckless jailbird than as an emblem of its broken soul.